Birendra Shah

11 results arranged by date

We received an unusual email last week. Michaella Ortega
wrote to tell us that Marlon Recamata, who confessed to shooting her father,
Philippine journalist Gerardo Ortega, in
2011, had been convicted and sentenced to life for the crime.

As
Nepal's constituent assembly failed to meet Sunday's
deadline for the passage of a new constitution, a new report released this
week on the risks to Nepal's media should remind political parties that peace
and stability are not prerequisites to media freedom but rather that a strong,
independent press operating without fear is a requirement for a healthy civil
society.

New York, June 14, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed today the conviction of two suspects in the 2009 murder of journalist Uma Singh, but
called for a continued investigation into the remaining suspects in the attack.

A court in Dhanusa district sentenced Lalita Singh and Nemlal Paswan to life imprisonment for their involvement in the brutal killing, according to local news reports. A group stabbed the Janakpur Today and Radio Janakpur correspondent to death in her home in Dhanusa, in the southeast near the border with India, in reprisal for her reporting on land grabs, according to CPJ research. News reports at the time said as many as 15 people carried out the fatal assault.

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New York, June 6, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed the life
imprisonment of the two men who murdered journalist Birendra Shah. CPJ also
calls for the arrest of three local Maoists accused of masterminding the 2007
killing.

Key Statistic
8th: Ranking on CPJ Impunity Index, making it one of world’s worst for press.

Nepal’s news media entered 2009 in a state of crisis. Attacks on the press had escalated in late 2008 amid a climate of impunity. The Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), a local press freedom group, led weeklong, nationwide demonstrations to raise awareness about the deteriorating environment. On December 28, 2008, Maoist leaders signed a 10-point agreement to address the lawless situation. Clauses included a promise to create a governmental bureau to investigate press freedom violations, local news reports said.

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Dear Prime Minister Dahal: On December 29, your government signed an agreement with local press freedom group the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), ending a week of protest by journalists against a series of attacks on media outlets which peaked in late December. That agreement promised that those attacks would be addressed.

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Nepal made a historic shift in 2008 from a monarchy to a coalition-ruled democratic republic under the leadership of a former Maoist guerrilla. Journalists’ uncertainty about the ex-rebel leader’s newfound legitimacy was apparent as they struggled to find a way to refer to him in print. Most hedged their bets and used his given name, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, which identified him as a Brahmin at the top of the Hindu caste system, alongside his ethnically neutral but aggressive-sounding nom de guerre, Prachanda, or “fierce one.”

New York, April 30, 2008 -- Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists' killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists where governments have consistently failed to solve journalists' murders.

New York, November 5, 2007—Maoist authorities issued a statement today confirming the murder of Nepalese journalist Birendra Shah on October 4, the day he was kidnapped, by members of their party, according to Guna Raj Luitel, news editor of Kantipur Daily in Kathmandu.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had distanced itself from the murder, which it called an individual and anarchic act by a district committee member, Lal Bahadur Chaudhary, and two associates. The three had described their involvement in the murder to the party by telephone, according to Luitel. They had previously been expelled from the party and would now face disciplinary action, Luitel said.

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New York , October 12, 2007 – The Committee to Protect Journalists is increasingly concerned about the fate of missing journalist Birendra Shah as political pressure mounts in Nepal to find him. CPJ called for the release of Shah, who reports for Nepal FM, Dristi Weekly, and Avenues TV, on Wednesday. He was abducted by local Maoist cadres in Bara district in central Nepal, according to the Federation of Nepalese Journalists.